Dutch Treat

From the Wall Street Journal. May be behind the firewall so it's reprinted in full:

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is one of the world's most prominent voices against radical Islam. A brave Muslim-born woman who fled oppression in her native Somalia, Ms. Hirsi Ali spoke and published widely and won a seat in the Parliament of her adopted home in the Netherlands. You'd think that the proudly multicultural Dutch would be proud of her. You'd be wrong.

Some lawmakers have called for a parliamentary emergency session to settle the latest raging dispute over Ms. Hirsi Ali. Although she is the Salman Rushdie of the post-9/11 era, The Hague now refuses to pay for her bodyguards. Ms. Hirsi Ali has lived with a death sentence hanging over her since a fanatical Muslim murdered filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who made a short movie based on a script by Ms. Hirsi Ali, and vowed to kill her too. The threats haven't stopped. But Dutch-funded protection will end because Ms. Hirsi Ali moved to Washington last year. She came back to the Netherlands Monday to keep her protection detail while she works out new arrangements for her future security.

It's the latest of many indignities. The government says it shouldn't have to pay for her bodyguards while she is abroad. Ms. Hirsi Ali hardly left Holland voluntarily. The 24-hour surveillance in recent years made it difficult for her to carry out her duties as a member of Parliament. Then her neighbors successfully sued to evict Ms. Hirsi Ali from her apartment; they claimed her presence depressed real-estate prices and put them in danger. Ms. Hirsi Ali didn't relish going back to the army barracks and prisons where she first sought shelter after the Van Gogh murder. In the final kick in the shins, the government considered revoking the then-MP's citizenship for misstatements she had made -- and admitted to years earlier -- to gain asylum in Holland in 1992. So Ms. Ali took a job at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. The cost of protecting her in the U.S. aren't known, but the fight over it is unseemly. Then again, the Dutch haven't shown great sympathy for a writer and politician whose only crime was to exercise her right to free speech to challenge the Islamists.

At any rate, Ms. Hirsi Ali is getting the message. Last week, she secured her Green Card allowing her to stay and work in the U.S. She plans to raise private funds there for her protection. We'll see whether Americans prove more generous than the country that first gave her refuge.